Well, dear readers, this persistent cough is persisting and it’s really quite annoying. Other than that, I feel fit as a fiddle and ready for love. Yesterday I did many things, none of which I can remember. I do know I had and have to still deal with a couple of book issues (which will be resolved this very day), and I do know that I wrote five pages of the script. I do know I ate Mexican food for lunch and I do know I made quite a few phone calls to quite a few people. These last few days are just zooming by and I’m constantly amazed to look at the clock and see it’s late-afternoon when it seems like only minutes ago it was early morning. I must say that after three years of basically nothing but one form of tension or another, I am so enjoying being relaxed and just going about my business. I feel young and spry and light and gay with abs and buns of steel. I feel effervescent and ebullient, not necessarily in that order. And all I can say is, I hope it lasts forever. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
Yesterday I picked up quite a few new DVDs. I put all of them in just to check out the transfers, and when I got to Claude Lelouch’s Les Uns et les Autres I watched the beginning and couldn’t stop watching. Yes, Virginia, I couldn’t stop watching – I come to praise Claude Lelouch and praise him unstintingly. Every time I see a Lelouch film that I somehow missed it ends up being fantastic and becoming a favorite. Les Uns et les Autres (entitled Bolero when it was released here in a butchered version) is an epic story spanning three generations (with most actors playing their own children and grandchildren). The stories are small, but the world in which they occur is filled with turmoil and change and drama. Mr. Lelouch’s common themes are chance and fate and what I love about this film especially are the moments when you know high drama is about to occur and he shoots these so matter-of-factly, with no hyperbole, just small, tender, subtle shots, that it just bowls you over with emotion. There is one scene specifically, the climax of a thirty year quest for a mother to be reunited with her son, whom she hasn’t seen since he was a baby (left on the railroad tracks with a note to avoid being killed by the Nazis). She is in an asylum, her memory having gone (early Alzheimer’s is what it seems like). The son finally finds out where she is, and visits. It’s all done without any dialogue in an extremely long shot. You only see the back of the mother’s head, and you see the man’s pain and suffering that she doesn’t recognize him. He doesn’t know whether to go or stay (all this still in the extreme long shot) – it’s so touching I can’t convey it – then, she gets up and walks away, and again he starts to leave but then just stands watching her. After what seems like minutes she turns to him and looks at him. And that’s the end of the scene. If that were done in an American film today that scene would have endless dialogue, be scored wall-to-wall with syrupy music and would be horrendous. The film is also about music – music that is part of everyone’s lives – how it touches and informs the characters is never less than surprising and frequently amazing. And the film’s final seventeen minutes, scored with Bolero (from start to finish), in which all the threads of the story come together, is bravura filmmaking at its finest. Lelouch is the real deal – he’s one of the most humane filmmakers ever and I can’t recommend this film strongly enough. As they say on eBay – Buy it Now.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must soon be effervescent and ebullient, not necessarily in that order.
Has anyone noticed how effervescent and ebullient I am? Oh, and I forgot to tell you the most important effervescent and ebullient news of all: The singing bird has come back and is very happy in its new home environment. It doesn’t frequent the yard as it did in the other home environment; it frequents the front of the house, right outside the kitchen. It’s out there singing away as I type these here notes – currently it’s singing I Could Go on Singing. It’s grand to have the singing bird back.
My goodness, I’m so effervescent and ebullient that it’s making me nauseous. I don’t know about you, but I’m always cautious when I’m nauseous. Sometimes, just to be contrary, I’m nauseous when I’m cautious. If anyone has a clew as to what the hell I’m going on about, just keep it to yourselves.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must write, I must make phone calls, I must settle the open issues book-wise, and, at some point, I must eat various and sundried foodstuffs. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any other dear reader any old question you like, and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and be sure they’re effervescent and ebullient, not necessarily in that order.